Towns Developer Officially Abandons The Game

Anyone who's kept an eye on the Steam indie scene would have no doubt heard of the cautionary tale of Towns, one of the very first Steam Greenlight approved games. Towns hit Steam long before all this early-access jazz started, so customers were understandably upset to discover that the game was essentially a "paid beta". The developers have done little to fix the game's most glaring problems in the two years since its release, and now, it looks like they are simply jumping ship.

"I hope you are not too disappointed," wrote developer Florian Frankenberger on the official forums, announcing that the latest Towns update would be its last one, "And if you are: I'm really sorry. I'm quite new to indie game dev and I couldn't really see that the game sales were declining that rapidly. I guess if I had more experience I would have seen it comming ..."

Frankenberger said that the decision was made almost purely for monetary reasons - Towns sales have dropped considerably since it's launch in 2012 (as is the case with most videogames...) and it simply wasn't worth it for him to continue its development. "I have to pay for the rent and food and this doesn't really suffice for any of it :("

However, he did have one final piece of "good" news for the dedicated Towns fanbase, namely, that a "Towns2" may be possible. "Xavi and I were talking about a possible Towns2. At the moment this is just in an idea stage and we can't really say if he, I or eventually Ben have the time to create a Towns2. As faithful fans of Towns we would of course reward you in some way, when/if the new game is released."

"I want to end this post by thanking you for reading this and for all your support in these two months. Again I'm sorry that we had to pull the plug right here, but I sincerely hope you can understand why we had to make that decision right now."

What do you think? Did you play Towns? Is it fair for the team to abandon the project, or do you feel that they owe it to their fanbase to "fix" it first?